Saturday morning

October 23, 1943

Dear Folks:

I am still here at the Second Army Replacement Depot at Trillahoma. This is our third day here and we have to wait until they can locate our new outfit on maneuvers. We got here at noon on Thursday and have been just waiting here since that time.

This Depot is located on the outskirts of Camp Hornet, Tennessee. Every night we go into the camp to take in a movie or go to the service club. I generally eat my dinner at the service club because the chow line at camp is very long. You see everyone who is going back to their outfit while the maneuvers are on has to report there. They find out just where the outfit is and then take us out there. We might go out Tomorrow and join our new battery.

We had a nice trip out here from Camp Wood. We went into St. Louis and got a train which took us to Nashville. From there we caught a train straight into Trillahoma. It is the Louisville and Nashville railroad that runs out here-you can find Trillahoma on the map that comes with the time-table. It is about in the middle between Nashville and Chattanooga, and has about 5,000 population. It is a nice little town with a lot of trees and big odd houses. We spent all Thursday afternoon there before reporting to the depot. The town people are pretty friendly and all speak with the “southern accent”. It sounds funny to us people from the north-just the same way we probably sound to them.

There isn’t much else to say. I am still using my old mailing address because we haven’t a new one yet. Don’t send any more mail until you hear from me-I’ll send it to you as soon as I find it out. It’s too bad all of you weren’t home when I called on Wednesday evening as I always like to talk to all of you. Ma sounded fine-just as though I was talking to her from Billy Walton’s house. Tom is still going great according to what ma was reading to me and I hope he can always stay at Fort Radman. He’ll miss the Mischam Paint base since he’s been there so long but at least he can go back and visit without too much trouble.

I’ll be close now and get this on the way-I’ll send my new address to you as soon as I find it out.

Joe